Don't write The Sun off as umpteenth wave garage-rock also-rans. If their debut EP Love & Death is any indication, Burney and crew have talent to burn, and no inclination of being pigeon-holed in any particular style. Sure, the solid if heard-this-before album opener (the Hives-ish "Fell So Hard") may set off a few cynical bells, but over the course of the next five songs The Sun whipsaw from garage, to dark-side psychedelic jams, and acoustic folk. This interview ran to twice the length of their EP, as lead singer Chris Burney and I discussed the shark-infested business of L.A., the badness of Charles Mingus, and peace through fucking:

Keith Daniels: Hey Chris, this is Keith from Suicidegirls.

Chris Burney: You're from Suicidegirls? Oh sweet.

KD: You ready for the interview?

CB: Yeah, yeah. They never tell me who's calling. "They" being the giant plethora of people we have in The Sun organization... I'm making that up.

KD: How many interviews have you done so far?

CB: To me, a lot, but the publicist at Warner's was like "Oh, this is nothin'." I'm doing one every other day or so.

KD: So let me get this straight, you guys played one show as The Sun before you got signed to Warner Brother's?

CB: Yeah. It was a series of hilarious and ridiculous events that concluded in us getting a record deal.

KD: How do you mean "hilarious"?

CB: Well, it was hilarious to us in that we always knew that the major label system was a bunch of fuckin' malarkey, and it proved it to us! [laughs] The way that L.A. as a city is such... Have you ever seen that movie Swimming With Sharks? It's kindof a good example. [L.A.'s] a water full of sharks, and when there's fucking blood in the water, when something somewhat new or somewhat different from the norm, like the Strokes or White Stripes... People who pay attention to music, or people who know music, to them it's obvious, like "Sure, the White Stripes, oh yeah, I get it. That makes sense." But the music industry is like "Whoa, long hair's back? Cool! Let's exploit that." So I had long hair, and recorded some songs with friends who'd made names for themselves in the industry. Like, I made some recordings with those Wilco boys... who to just me and them it's like yeah, we're friends and we're making music together, and we recorded together, but it takes on different connotations when you're dealing with people in a business suit who wish to exploit that, y'know?

KD: So that's how you go from Nirvana to 4 Non Blondes right afterwards.

CB: Right, exactly. I hope we're not 4 Non Blondes though. [laughs] Maybe! They had that one song...

KD: I was telling a friend about you guys, and they said "Another 'The' band?"

CB: [laughs] Yeah, we get a lot of that, but it's up to no-one but ourselves to make a record that'll make people go "Oh. Damn." I'm not scared. [laughs]

CB: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I'd been a fan of their earlier records. They made so many cool records, but the new one is like this thesis of all the previous records. It's like a really giant simplification of this connected philosophy. It's magic. It's really nice. It [also] showed a lot of age and understanding of their situation.

KD: What have they taught you about being in a rock'n'roll band?

CB: They've got this totally cool pace on the road. They put on this joy-filled energetic show every night, and to keep that up they definitely settle into their roles on the road. It's all their friends, and everybody's really friendly, and nice, and not antagonistic. They're there to do what they need to do to put on this show, and when the show's going on everybody's enjoying it, even the crew, everybody on stage. It's amazing.

KD: Do they make you want to put on a bigger stage show when you go out headlining? Pyrotechnics, balloons, confetti, and all that stuff?

CB: Vaguely. The band before this for Bryan and Brad, the guitarist and bassist, was a band called The Floatation Wall, and their legacy was one of just that on a smaller level. It was like a DIY version of the show that we're a part of now, so we understand it and have kindof been there before, but just not on this level. To see it with this much tenacity behind it is definitely still just as awe-inspiring as seeing The Floatation Wall.

KD: I've read that you're a big fan of classical and jazz.

CB: I grew up playing the upright bass. In high school I was obsessed with Charles Mingus. Reading Mingus's autobiography in the 10th grade was awesome. It was such another life-changing experience, like "Whoaaa. When he was my age he was trying to be a pimp? And at the same time was a musical genius? My life is boring!"

KD: Ever use your bass as a weapon like he used to do?

CB: [laughs]

KD: He kindof made the upright bass punk rock.

CB: He did. Have you ever seen the video where they're performing somewhere in Europe, and his bass keeps slipping out from under him? He's getting pissed, so he just picks it up, shoves the end-pick through the floor with all that power of his body. [After that] the bass stands up by itself because the end-pick's stuck in the floor, and he just rips it, tears into it.

KD: So at what age did you start playing the guitar?

CB: I actually didn't start playing the guitar until I was on tour as an upright bassist for other bands. I'd borrow their guitars and say "I'll figure this out."

KD: What inspired you to switch instruments?

CB: It's just a form of expression that you can do in a band... I was hanging out with Tim Easton, I was playing upright bass for him, he's a songwriter, and I was on the road with Victoria Williams and Mark Olsen. They're just songwriters at heart.

KD: Mark Olsen from The Jayhawks, originally?

CB: Yeah, yeah. I was their touring upright bassist for a while, and learning from them the way that songwriters have a tendency to have trouble expressing themselves except through song, [and] I was running into that same problem because I was picking up the guitar. I could feel better just by writing a song.

KD: And it's probably difficult to write a song on a bass.

CB: Yeah. Now that I've kindof got the hang of [playing the guitar] I want to try and go back to it. Brad, our bass player, is the same way. He was classically trained. So maybe we could have some dueling upright bass parts in our songs. Might be fun. We just bare bones it a lot, lately, because we knew what we were gonna have to do on the road, so we kindof wrote songs accordingly with what our lives shows could be right now.

KD: Is this tour the first tour as The Sun? You've only been together for a year.

CB: We started touring at the beginning of winter, and this is like the last hurrah. We toured all through winter, and it was fucking... it was rough. We were hitting Chicago on the coldest day of the year.

CB: Not that many. I was expecting a lot more. It just seems so obvious. We live in such a cynical time that I'm sure that most people think better of it. Especially writers.

KD: Yeah. [laughs] Your record came out in February. How has your life changed in those two months?

CB: We've just been on the road, so my life is pretty... you gotta sink into "Hey, I don't get to have a girlfriend, or a normal life for months on end." Having a record out is what we wanted to do in the first place.

KD: Did you have a girlfriend before you went on the road? Did you have to break up?

CB: We're trying to keep it going. It definitely went through a period of very bad... stuff when I went on the road.

KD: She get jealous of the other girls out there?

CB: Well, I told her about it when we first got together, because I'd been on the road for four years straight with other acts. It's just an understanding that you come to, but no, I don't do all that road stuff anymore. I go home to a book.

KD: You guys are from Columbus, Ohio right?

CB: Yeah.

KD: I was kindof surprised to hear that. Your music has a very Los Angeles sound.

CB: Well, I lived in Los Angeles for two years because that's where all the upright bass gigs were. So I showed up there and slept on people's floors and stuff. I was roommates with some of the boys from the Brian Jonestown Massacre for a while, and they lived off of me.

KD: How did you end up being friends with the guys from Wilco?

CB: Leroy [Bach] played bass on some of the first stuff I did. I was making four-track demos, because I was living with Tim in Los Angeles, and Tim knew those guys from way back, because he used to be in a band called the Haynes Boys, and they played together. So I was playing upright bass for Tim when Wilco backed him up to make his second record, and we all went out on the road together. I just got to know 'em, they played on my four-track stuff. Leroy really liked my four-track stuff. Just like "Hey, you wanna record?", and I got Jay in on it too.

KD: Does Jay ever talk about what happened with Wilco? Do you have any insight on that?

CB: After you're a band together for that long, it just sometimes happens like that. I haven't seen that movie. I try to avoid it because I have personal relationships with those guys. It happens in a band. You spend nine hours in a van every day with the same four dudes for months, and then years. You have to be really communist about the way you create art, and communism, in theory, is all well and good, but it actually breaks down at elementary levels if you put lots of strain on it.

KD: Have you guys ran into any tensions amongst yourselves because, y'know, you've signed to a major label, and things are getting big-time for you now?

CB: We're actually kindof bonding over it all. We started backwards, like instead of being a band and getting signed, we got signed and then started learning how to be a band. We're better off for it. We're so excited to make our first record, just like "Man, this is awesome."

KD: Have you got all the songs together for the first full-length?

CB: We write all the time. We're constantly writing songs. We've got tons and tons of songs, but I'm not even sure if anyone's ready to make the first record. We could write some of it in the studio; it's all about what's really, really inspiring at the time. It's weird, we've been touring with so many different kinds of bands, and we run into some bands who think of writing as a secondary thing. To us it's such a natural thing to be writing all the time: on the road, in your hotel room. Writing, reading, writing, listening to music, creating music, that's why we're doing this.

KD: It's probably helped you out that you've been on tour for long periods of time before this band. I know a lot of people who write songs in their bedroom, and then when they get out on the road they have a hard time writing in that new lifestyle.

CB: Yeah, yeah. It's difficult, but I've learned how to write on the road. It's real comfortable for me.

KD: I've noticed that a lot of the promos I'm getting nowadays, from bands that have just been signed to a major label, have been EPs. Have they explained to you why they're doing that, or what the thought process is behind it?

CB: We were kindof more like "Hey, we just want to put out an EP." It was kindof an unusual agreement with us. We just wanted something that we could put out quick. The major labels are such a bureaucracy, and when you say "We're releasing a record." there's a certain mechanism that it kicks into action. You have all these people working on your record, and they feel they need to do a certain amount of the job. When you say "We're doing an EP" it lightens the burden, it's not that big of a deal. If you don't sell that many, it's fine, it's just to give us something to go out on the road and tour on, y'know?

KD: What are you listening to nowadays?

CB: Personally I've been sticking with... Brad bought a cool new Cave-In record, Turbonegro, Los Mutantes. We've actually been listening to a lot of old Flaming Lips, because we're really stoked on them. I mean, we dance in their show every night.

KD: You dance in the show?

CB: Yeah, Brad and I have been getting into the animal costumes.

KD: [laughs] Which one are you?

CB: I like to be the pig. Brad likes to be the skunk.

KD: [laughs] You guys pretty good dancers?

CB: Um.. we've had a couple of lessons from some electroclash friends in Chicago.

KD: What do you think about electroclash?

CB: I haven't paid much attention to it. A girl friend of mine in Chicago is really into it. She made me a really cool mix-tape of all this really sex-oriented, beat-driven, political stuff, about fucking for peace, fucking for revolution.

KD: I'm all in favor of that!

CB: Yeah, we've been incorporating some of that lately.

KD: How do you fuck for peace?

CB: I think times like now, where they're pushing back so many civil-liberties, we can push back on the free speech front, to where Peaches can get out and fuckin' drop and show her pussy on stage, just like "This is fucking for peace." just by being out there and doing it -- inspiring people to go home after your show and talk about something political, and fuck. If, at your show, you can inspire people to get horny, and think politically, that would be fucking for peace.

KD: You just don't want 'em to get too horny, and have to get kicked out. [laughs]

CB: That would be kindof good though! If you could get an army of people in pink uniforms to storm the White House that would be sweet, but...

KD: That would probably blow Dick Cheney's mind.

CB: There's this thing about the Flaming Lips' show, this sense of community, this sense of joy, even though the Flaming Lips aren't political, if that feeling is translated to political action.... to where you're being nice about it, and not beating people over the head with the Socialist message, or this message, or that message, things could actually change.

KD: The message of the music itself, not just the lyrics, is a political action.

CB: Right, exactly.

KD: Is that what you're trying to do with your music as well?

CB: Hopefully. Yes, definitely.

KD: So what would the message be that you'd like someone to get from your music?

CB: Well, I get the opportunity to try to get out a message for a whole lot of different things. Like we just wrote a song about this myth of fame, like "You can rise up from the working class to the entertainer class, have a life like the kids on Cribs." It's fucking bullshit. It's a myth. It's one in a thousand. It's just making us believe that we can rise up and make a bunch of money, but in actuality the entertainer class is poor compared to the one percent. Look at the new punk-rock guys, Good Charlotte and stuff, having the DMS crew in their videos and shit.

KD: That illusion is used to pacify people, and keep them from wanting real power. Give 'em a few trinkets, keep 'em happy.

CB: Though, I mean, there's been a couple of records that have been really popular, and if you go back and listen to them you think "Whoa, wait a second, they're actually saying some cool shit." Like that Rancid record "Let's Go", talking about killing cops, and a million kids bought that record. So many people can call them out as hypocrites, and disregard what they're saying, but you know what? To a fourteen year-old kid who's listening to that Eminem record saying "Fuck America. Fuck the hypocrisy in this country." and believing it? That's kindof cool. Probably change his life a little bit.

KD: What was the record that changed your life that way?

CB: Um.. Jesus. Don't make me say it was Nirvana, but I was the right age.

KD: Nothing wrong with that. I was like twelve years old when they came out.

CB: Yeah, exactly. I was... twelve too. It was like "What the fuck?"

KD: One day you've got Warrant singing about "Cherry Pie" and the next...

CB: It's just not doing it for me! When I was seven or eight I liked the MTV, and then you just lose interest, and then with Nirvana... I watched it every once in a while, and Nirvana came on, and it was like "Wow! Fuckin' a'! Holy shit!"

KD: It seems like rock is coming back and is vital again, and like you were saying the record companies smell blood in the water. Does it worry you at all, that the imitation garage bands are going to start coming out?

CB: It's up to people who like the Strokes, like the White Stripes, if they truly believe... to keep pressure on them to continue to try to tear it down. It's hard to explain, but that sense of cynical pretentiousness needs to be totally destroyed, totally thrown out the window, but at the same time, how we do protect ourselves from...? That's part of the Flaming Lips' show -- total non-pretentiousness, "You're not the audience. We're not the band. We're all in this together. Let's all sing along." But at the same time... it's just, it's getting difficult now. There's something... we'll figure it out, I think.

KD: What's the immediate future look like for you?

CB: We get to finish up the rest of the tour, and go to the U.K., come home, make a record.

KD: Have you been to the U.K. yet, with the Sun?

CB: [laughs] No, but they just printed a really funny article in the NME about us.

KD: What'd they say?

CB: [laughs] When we were at the St. Louis show, when Bush gave his war speech, we were on tour with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. We were all just kindof going crazy, because we knew the war was coming, and didn't know quite what to do with ourselves. So our friend, Paul, we brought him up on stage and draped an American flag over him, and he started masturbating underneath it while humming the national anthem. We busted into a rock'n'roll set behind him, and that's the story the NME chose to print. They had to write about it, because they're sensationalist people.

KD: So when you go to the U.K. people are going to think "Oh, the band that masturbates.. under the American flag.."

CB: Plus we did a dirty video that kindof got banned in the U.K.

KD: Has it been banned here, or would they just not show it anyway?

CB: I don't think they could even show it here. It's not that bad! People fucking.

You know, I have a pair of undies with a picture of cherry pie on it. I chose to wear them today and have had that song stuck in my head ever since. Funny it should be mentioned in the interview. Hrmm...